Saturday, January 23, 2010

Gen X, the Forgotten Purveyor

I have seen this video tweeted about a lot in the last couple of days and it sparked some thought regarding Generation X, believe it or not.

There is a lot of ballyhoo about Gen Y, and their impact on everything from the economy to social media, to education and more. I find it interesting and valid, however it is amazing how Gen X often gets looked over in the passage from Baby Boomers to Gen Y.

I would ask you to consider a few things before you jump on the bandwagon that professes Gen Y's impact on US society to be supreme. Gen X, aside from the World War II generation, has experienced the largest amount of global turmoil, living through the first Gulf War, the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the current ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, several large economic recessions (including our current mess - so called the largest since the Great Depression)and enough political scandal to last two lifetimes. In addition to being old enough to not only live through these events, Gen X is old enough to have worked and supported families through these events. In addition to national and international stress, Gen X has been largely responsible for ushering in the information age. Gen X has and continues to develop and innovate technological breakthroughs, that allow for things like social media, increasing utility on the Internet and other engineering and technological breakthroughs.

What is the point of this post you may ask? In the fervor to crown Gen Y as the be all and end all in terms of spending power and the future of our society, I ask you to take five minutes to think about our "the most forgotten" generation, Gen X and all of the crap this generation has endured to continue to deliver the US innovative solutions, the Information Age, and more technological breakthrough than this country has seen in a very long time.

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About Short Attention Span Theatre

Jacob Leffler possesses 16 years as a media/communications professional. Most of that time has been spent as a business owner in the digital media industry. This blog covers many angles in digital advertising, marketing, social media and general business. A personal note or two gets thrown in from time to time.